I think we are okay, I have no idea, I probably should take a look at the procedure Mike has printed out so i can make sure. I know he got a cam lock tool, I think. I have an air compressor and some air tools, a basic 100+ piece mechanics set and a diverse vocabulary of obscenities.

well, 3 destroyed sockets, 5 trips to ACE, 9 stripped bolts, and 13 hours later Jay and I finally got the bumper on all the way. Unfortunately without changing my timing belt. The genius who did the first timing belt job used lock-tight on most of the bolts including the timing belt tensioner. None of us, (Jay, Keith, or myself) could get the bolt to budge and it's only supposed to be tightened to 33 ft. lbs.

The good news is that somehow my lost power is back and my car didn't stumble on acceleration once on the way home!

Thanks to Jay for letting us use his home, and patiently sticking with it to the end, Nate for the help and conversation, Keith for his awesome help and expertise, and Randy and Todd for coming through to help a fellow enthusiast on short notice and for the advice on your day off.

Yeah, it was too bad that the the Incredible Hulk did your last timing belt job. Those bolts were on way too tight. The lock tight didn't help either. ??? Jay has a nice photo of some blown out sockets.

Sorry I wasn't able to stick around and put your car back together. At least we know next time that we don't need to take off the bumper and other stuff.

Yeah, I'm not really sure how air tools would have helped us. One of our biggest problems was that a lot of the hex bolts were already kind of stripped. They should have been replaced the last time they were out, not reused and torqued down even tighter. That 8MM hex bolt in Jay's picture was already rounded out to about 9MM when we started.

I am wondering if we can fit an impact wrench between the radiator and the tensioner. Maybe if we take Randy's suggestion of hammering in a triple square, then going at it with an impact?

The radiator did not want to come out without taking out the entire radiator support. We didn't want to deal with stuff like lining up the hood support, so we left it in place. There was plenty of room for hand tools with the fans removed.

be careful when you guys reinstall the timing belt tensioner. We had the timing belt done on my wifes car last fall and the timing belt tensioner was over tightened. Unfortunatly the tensioner ended up failing. The motor was toasted, both top & bottom end were damaged. So $5417 later (parts & labor) the new motor should be finished being built this week. It should be back on the road by the weekend.

So in the end please use the proper torque on those bolts. The last thing you want to do is be carless like we have been since the middle of may.

it was actually done in denver by a reputable shop there (no names will be mentioned). But they are working with us even know we live on the east coast now to take care of the issue. It has been quite the fiasco.